Korean Air (003490) faces the threat of a pilot strike ahead of its December merger with Asiana Airlines (020560), after management and the union failed to agree on how to rank pilots from the two carriers by seniority.
The Korean Air Pilots Union (KAPU) said on the 8th that it filed for labor dispute mediation with the Seoul Regional Labor Relations Commission on the 7th, after 30 rounds of bargaining over the 2024 collective agreement and the 2025 wage agreement ended without a deal. Mediation is a required step for a strike to be legal. A walkout would be the first at the carrier since 2016.
The two sides are at odds over how pilot seniority will be determined once Korean Air and Asiana Airlines combine.
The union argues that management drew up the seniority plan unilaterally, despite Article 24 of the collective agreement, which states that the company shall abide by the flight crew seniority ranking system agreed upon by labor and management. "For a pilot, seniority is both a source of pride and a pay scale," the union said. "Management intends to fix the wages and promotion timing of some 2,600 pilots based on calculations whose premises have not been settled and cannot be verified." It added: "The date of appointment as captain sets not only the base pay structure but also the starting point for senior captain and chief captain allowances, and the gap accumulates until retirement. If the basis for seniority is finalized without those affected accepting it, that distrust will ultimately carry into the cockpit."
The biggest point of contention is that the two airlines applied different hiring standards to pilots from civilian backgrounds. Applicants to Korean Air had to log 1,000 flight hours, while Asiana Airlines required only 300. The Korean Air union says that gap should be reflected in seniority, along with the fact that new hires served on fixed-term contracts before receiving their permanent employee numbers.
Korean Air counters that its plan already accounts for those factors. "The average gap in promotion seniority between military and civilian backgrounds has been nine months at Korean Air and four years at Asiana Airlines, and that existing gap is maintained after the merger," the company said. "Korean Air's civilian-background pilots will be promoted to captain an average of three years and three months earlier than those from Asiana Airlines, so there is no disadvantage such as delayed promotion for Korean Air's civilian-background pilots."
The company also said that "deciding whom to promote under reasonable promotion criteria is a management prerogative belonging to the employer," and that "the matters in KAPU's mediation filing cannot be subject to mediation." It added: "Through outside consulting and other steps, the company drew up an objective and reasonable promotion seniority plan that causes no disadvantage to Korean Air pilots. The union insists that its members must be promoted ahead of pilots from Asiana Airlines without exception, and is demanding that the company disregard the existing careers and qualifications of Asiana Airlines pilots entirely."
The union plans rallies from Sept. 14 to 20 outside Korean Air's headquarters in Gangseo-gu, Seoul, at Incheon Airport's Terminal 2 and near the home of Korean Air's chairman. Mediation can last up to 30 days, and because the union already held a strike vote in April, it will gain the legal right to industrial action if mediation fails. Because aviation is designated an essential public service, flights would still be maintained at the level of essential duties agreed by labor and management even if industrial action begins.
